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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Stellarsolver should not fail from the beginning

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I'm not sure I haven't modified any parameters involuntarily but...
It happened both with latest Stellarmate stable on an Raspi4 and with latest KStars 3.5.0 stable on PC running Ubuntu, just after burning the image (Stellarmate) or apt upgrade (Ubuntu)

- Start KStars
- Select Simulators profile in EKOS and connect
- Set telescope tracking to ON
- Capture and solve
--> FAIL! :(

I would expect simulation parameters to be set for success to start with.
Then, one could start from there...

Am I [doing|expecting] something wrong ?
On a fresh install, what would be the shortest path for solving success on a simulation ?
3 years 4 months ago #63458

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It may not be causative, but I find solving works for me (only) when I do a goTo with the simulators before asking it to plate solve.
3 years 4 months ago #63459

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Do you have GSC installed? Without it solving will fail since there are no stars in the image. I suppose that Stellarmate comes with GSC but did you install it on your desktop computer as well? Just checking...
3 years 4 months ago #63460

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I had a star field in the ‘captured’ image, so GSC is also in the Ubuntu desktop. Initially got only a few stars, then I increased exposition time to 10 seconds and got a star-rich image. The solver failed, anyway.

@jerry: I moved the scope with a goto to a star in KStars, but it failed also. I will test it again tomorrow, pointing the scope to different sky positions...
Last edit: 3 years 4 months ago by Joaquin.
3 years 4 months ago #63462

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Have you got the correct solver indexes installed to suit the simulator telescope settings? I had trouble because of this, on my first try with StellarSolver. After I changed the simulator telescope settings to match those of my imaging set up and the index files I had installed it worked perfectly.

Alan
3 years 4 months ago #63463

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If as you say this is a fresh install, you are probably missing the necessary in indexes.
3 years 4 months ago #63468

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Did you turn on "Alignment" logging in the Ekos logs? Also, you can have the solver output lots of information into a separate log file to get as much detail as you want about what happened. It would be good to know why it failed, since there is always a reason.
3 years 4 months ago #63472

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The astrometry index files for the FOV of the simulator were not loaded.
That was the problem. Thanks !
After loading them, solver worked really very very fast. I have followed your work on this over the last few months. Thanks! and congratulations.

In any case, I still think that the simulator should work by default after KStars installation (that is, the appropriate indexes to the FOV of the CCD simulator should be loaded at install - or first time INDI/EKOS is instantiated). A successful start is much more motivating !

On the other hand, I do not remember to see any warning. Should I ?. To try the solver without ANY index file should trigger all kinds of emergency lights and sounds...
Last edit: 3 years 4 months ago by Joaquin.
3 years 4 months ago #63474

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So it actually does log a warning if there are no index files loaded at all, but currently to see the messages from StellarSolver in KStars, you need to have alignment logging turned on. We should definitely think about that.

The problem with having index files included with KStars is that index files are very large and the index files a person will need are very different for different setups. Your statement that it would be good to have the index files needed to solve the simulator images installed from the beginning to encourage users is a good one, except that the index files will take up valuable space that they could be using for the index files they actually need. Also I would worry that having it work out of the box for the simulators would give the user a false sense of security that it would work just fine under the stars with no intervention. I would hate for a user to have it solving just fine with simulators inside and then to go outside only to have it fail under the stars. I would rather have the user find out that they need to download the appropriate index files inside with simulators and be forced to think about which index files they need, get used to that, and then when they get ready to go out under the stars, to think about it again and download the right ones.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Joaquin
3 years 4 months ago #63501

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Loading Indexes should be one of the steps in the EKOS Setup wizard. Give the user a tool in the wizard to calculate FOV and then provide the list of index recommendations to load as is done within the alignment options.
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3 years 4 months ago #63502

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That’s not a bad idea!
3 years 4 months ago #63506

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